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home > May 26, 2008 issue > article
Much more than a game
By Bridget Mintz Testa
‘America’s Army' provides an enterprise platform for Army training
What began as an online effort to attract potential recruits
has taken on a new life in the Army as an enterprise tool. “America’s
Army,” a free online game that shows players what it’s like to be a
soldier, was launched July 4, 2002. But beyond its recruiting role —
still a major goal — the game has been adapted for training, weapons
systems prototyping and even helping combat veterans readjust to
life outside a war zone.
Central to these multiple uses is
the effort the America’s Army
team has made to ensure that no
single department or organization
in that service owns the game or
its vast libraries of assets. These
assets include avatars — or graphical
representations — of soldiers,
people, vehicles, weapon systems,
terrain, cities, maps, combat scenarios,
rules of engagement and
more.
“America’s Army has pushed to
reuse the same elements for many
purposes,” said Col. Casey
Wardynski, originator of the game, associate professor of economics
at the U.S. Military Academy, and director of the Army’s Office of
Economic and Manpower Analysis. “We can build one soldier
avatar and use it again and again. When we build something in
America’s Army, the U.S. government owns it completely ... and [it]
can therefore be used for any application or use of the game. So costs
keep going down. ”
After America’s Army went live, requests started coming in to use
the game for purposes other than recruiting, such as training. That
was the case with the Common Remotely Operated Weapons
Station. A CROWS is installed inside an armored vehicle or building
to protect soldiers from enemy fire. Sitting inside the CROWS,
a gunner can remotely fire a weapon that sits atop the vehicle or
building. The station was fielded without a training device other than
operational CROWS-equipped vehicles, so America’s Army developers
were asked to build a basic skills trainer, Wardynski said.
“The trainer shows exactly what the operator sees in the CROWS
system,” said Sgt. 1st Class Gary
Woodruff, a combat weapons
developer who works on CROWS
at the Training and Doctrine
Command based at Fort Leonard
Wood, Mo. “The tool makes it
possible to link three users together
in training so they can practice
working together in the same scenario.
It trains for multiple skills,
including the whole combat experience,
not just operating the
weapon.”
The trainer was introduced in
Balad, Iraq, in 2006. “After the very
first time they used the basic skills
trainer, it’s been the required way to train,” Woodruff said. Since 2006,
the trainers have been distributed throughout Afghanistan and Iraq.
By linking multiple users, soldiers can learn to work together instead
of learning one at a time in a real CROWS-equipped vehicle.
The tool is also used for prototyping, as with the rapid-response missile
(RRM), a weapon that, if built, could strike with precision in complex
urban environments. “The Army wants to hit only targets [that
might be] especially difficult or that are located next to a friendly or a
noncombatant,” said John Meadows, who heads RRM prototyping at
the Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering
Center (AMRDEC) at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala.
Initially, America’s Army was supposed to simulate control screens
and hand controllers for the RRM, but its use expanded quickly to the
entire weapon system. “We put a full simulation of the missile in the
game so soldiers can give feedback on how the weapon operates,”
Meadows said. “By the end, soldiers will have participated in the
design so they’ll have ownership, and it’ll be a better device.”
Prototyping a system in software is always cheaper than doing so in
hardware. “Without America’s Army, we would have to build a custom
computer, custom software, all our own graphics and all the scenarios,
so there would have been lots of upfront costs,” Meadows said.
With America’s Army, the only new elements are the graphics and
dynamics specific to the missile system, and the software runs on a
standard PC.
Although no firm date has been set for completion of the prototype,
it will be put on disks and distributed to soldiers to get their feedback.
If the RRM becomes a reality, America’s Army will build the trainer,
Meadows said.
At Walter Reed Army Medical Center, injured soldiers relearn how
to drive under noncombat conditions with a simulator built by
America’s Army. The simulator is one element in the treatment of
wounded soldiers entering civilian life or returning to active duty. The
hospital partnered with the Army Center for Enhanced Performance
at West Point (CEP) to help these soldiers learn and apply to their
recovery the basics of enhanced performance, such as goal-setting,
attention control and energy management.
In training for combat, soldiers learn they are targets at all times. A
warfighter “must drive offensively and defensively at the same time,”
said Maj. Bruce Bredlow, assistant director at CEP. “When they come
back from battle, they must almost go through decompression to learn
how to drive normally again.”
CEP called in America’s Army to develop a driving simulator for
soldiers to use as they recover at Walter Reed. Those who use the simulator,
which is still in development, will be able to practice necessary
new skills, such as using hand controls if they have lost their legs. The
simulator can also help soldiers who’ve suffered from perceptual
changes, such as those resulting from brain trauma, become aware of
those changes.
For soldiers who’ve driven in Iraq, where every soda can could be
an improvised explosive device and stop signs are routinely ignored,
the simulator can help lose the sense of always being a target and adjust
to driving in noncombat conditions. By using third-party biofeedback
software, integrated into the simulator by America’s Army, soldiers can
learn to detect and understand their own possible combat-ready reactions
to a situation, then retrain themselves with visual and sound cues.
“It is a modality that will help soldiers achieve optimal performance
considering their injuries, [whether those are] amputation, mental or
brain injury,” said Lt. Col. Stephanie Daugherty, chief of the occupational
therapy clinic at the Walter Reed center. “We can adapt the simulator
for whatever the individual needs.”
Daugherty said the simulator can offer soldiers a visually realistic
simulation of driving. “It gives them exposure and confidence before
really driving.”
Through the linkage with CEP’s techniques for enhanced performance,
the simulator can help soldiers perform more tasks than relearn
how to drive. “If we can address these issues, increase functional performance
and improve quality of life, then soldiers can make career
and life decisions with all the information that’s available about their
capabilities,” Daugherty said.
The next big thing for the game will be the release of Version 3.0
of America’s Army this fall. “We are migrating training applications
to the 3.0 Version,” said Frank Blackwell, the game’s software manager,
located at AMRDEC. “We’re doing an unmanned aerial and
ground vehicle training simulation and an Apache helicopter simulation
for the recruiting side. We’re adding a Blackhawk door gunner to
the virtual Army experience. We’re constantly enhancing the public
game.”
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